5/16/2012 @ 6:00PM

Hong Kong's Secret Tables

Theres a man selling handbags from a shed on the sidewalk halfway up DAguilar Street in Lan Kwai Fong, a crowded business-and-entertainment district on Hong Kong Island. Behind him is an open door that leads to a dark alley.

At the far end is a stairwell, lit by a naked bulb. It may strike you that this is the exact spot youd choose to film the drug deal scene if you were shooting a CSI episode, but never mind. Climb the steps to an unmarked door. Youll be met by a man in a dinner jacket welcoming you into an immaculate white room where some of the best food in Hong Kong is being ­prepared in a gleaming industrial kitchen. Sit down, sip champagne and revel in the strangeness of it all.

This is Fa Zu Jie. Its not a restaurant exactly but one of the handful of top private kitchens, or sue fon tsoi, that have sprung up in Hong Kong as a reaction to skyrocketing rents and onerous licensing fees. Theyre tucked away in office buildings, warehouses and apartment blocks, usually high above street level. Theres no signage to announce their existence, and they dont advertise. Your fellow diners may be celebrities, in-the-know executives, visiting chefs, even nobility; Yin Yang on Ship Street has hosted members of both the Thai and Japanese royal families.

One discovers private kitchens by word of mouth or a local gastronomic blog or a concierge. Exactly how many exist in the city is unclear, since not registering with the government is part of the point. A safe answer is: more than last week. Each time I recommended one during a recent visit, I heard about two or three more in return.

Getting to them isnt always as ­adventurous as the spy-movie ­machinations needed to find Fa Zu Jie, but the unlikely settings are part of the fun. When I visited Club Qing, a ­tea-focused private kitchen that serves $40 pots of aged Puerh, I had to make my way through the lobby of a dingy, low-ceilinged office building and scanned the directory for long minutes before spotting the name on an upper floor.

Private kitchens tend to have only a few tables. Theyll nearly always serve a set menu, market fresh by necessity–the retrofitted spaces where theyre situated seldom have room for a stocked pantry, let alone a walk-in fridge. With so few seats available and just a single seating each night, spots are at a premium.

I counted myself lucky to land a table at Fa Zu Jie with less than a months notice. Opened in 2010 by two former advertising executives and a banker, it has become a prime gathering place. When I visited, every seat at the five tables was taken, including an eight-top that belonged to a raucous party downing trophy bottles of Bordeaux like they were Jägermeister.

Chef Paul Hui grew up in Shanghai yearning to cook, but ended up as the creative director for a Hong Kong ad shop. Two years ago, after emergency heart surgery, he had the classic ­hospital-bed epiphany about the ­purposeful life. At Fa Zu Jie he turns out what he describes as Shanghaiese food influenced by France and Italy, which means cross-cultural curiosities such as pastas made from green beans. One course consisted of a large martini glass stuffed with a whelk in its shell, clam broth, fish sauce, apple slices and a coil of noodles made from a root ­nobody seemed able to translate, all marinating in Chinese yellow wine. It tasted like a dream.

I felt the same way about nearly everything I ate at Number 12, which is reached by riding the freight elevator of an apartment building to the fifth floor and turning right past the Hindu temple. It is owned by four friends who tired of the typical restaurant experience. They rented a small space in 2010 and hired a chef to cook for them and their friends. Soon friends of friends started showing up and eventually, said Simon Cheong, one of the partners, people whod say, Im a friend of so-and-so, but none of us knew who so-and-so was.

The night I visited, the set menu began with a plate of 12 single-bite ­appetizers arranged with the precision of surgical instruments. Then came a transcendent soup of dried and fresh conch with chicken and yam, which may or may not belong to the Cantonese canon but certainly should. It culminated with a prawn-studded fried rice that ranks with the best of its kind that Ive eaten.

Still, nothing prepared me for Ta
Pantry
, which would rank as my favorite restaurant of the moment, if it were actually a restaurant. Its situated on Star Street on the second floor of a building so anonymous that I dare anyone to find it without calling Esther Sham, the chef/proprietor, from the sidewalk and having her reel you in. (Apparently, Francis Ford Coppola managed to locate it.) The dining area consists of a single wooden table, which Sham rents out nightly for about $620 to $850 U.S. For that, shell cook for ten guests and keep serving courses until you ask her to stop.

Sham was born in Hong Kong but immigrated to California with her family as a child. She attended Arcadia High and UC Irvine but felt the tug of her homeland, so in 2005 she moved back to become a fashion model. (Suffice it to say that she is impeccably qualified.) While modeling she fell hard for good food. I guess you always want exactly what you cant have, she says. Her businessman brother proposed renting a space where he could store his wine collection–mostly high-end Bordeaux and California cabernet, now available for purchase–and Sham could indulge her cooking habit.

When I ate there Sham had just returned from a stint in France apprenticing at Le Jardin des Sens and Louis XIII. Not knowing her food before, I couldnt discern how much influence that had, but what she served me was wildly good. From a list of four options Id preselected the Japanese menu. It started with three variations on tuna, and an exquisite custard of foie gras, mushroom and tamago egg, then picked up steam with miso-marinated cod atop a slice of daikon radish with the thickness of tracing paper. A slow-cooked duck that matched the consistency of the caramelized onions around it followed, and then a simple but unforgettable spaghetti with uni, a dish that may be the most powerful convergence of Italian and Japanese creativity since the Tripartite Pact of 1940.

I longed to return the next night to try one of Shams three other menus (and make a dent in her brothers collection), but shes booked three months in advance. So I lingered over dessert and tea and then slipped out of the anonymous building and directly into the throng on Star Street, feeling like a secret agent mingling with the civilians.